Viet- Nam Info Series No . 13

• ULLETIN A WEEKLY PUBLICATION OF THE EMBASSY OF VIET-NAM

2251 "R" Street. N .11.. lIashington. D. C. 20008 (Telephone : 234-4860) 1968 TET ATTACKS (11 - 69)

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In the Year of the Monkey, 1968

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With ruins the agony of misery and despair

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Mute witnesses to terror

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DARK TET TO REMEMBER The ominous portent of the

sweeping violence, horror, and heartbreak was not there, Com" m unist preachments of a peaceful and joyous seven-day truce on Tet, that most sacred and most festive Vietnamese holiday season, rang with dull monotony, nagged for emulation by Saigon,

But as the new moon began to emerge from darkness to herald the advent of the 'Year of the Mon­key, and on the first day of the Lunar New Year (January 31) -barely after the din of welcoming firecrackers had died down - the Communists abruptly repudiated their own truce, launching con­certed' attacks on South Vietnam­ese cities and population centers.

Viet Cong and North Vietnam­ese army regulars, 60,000 strong, swooped down with savage fury on their targets behind a hail of mortar, rocket, gun, and explos­ives fire. The destruction of milit­ary and government installations

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MilitSTY inatallations were first priority Places of worship

In shattering a self-proclaimed 7-day truce, the VC heaped savagery, suffering, and death

was their first objective, but with initial successes wearing out pre­cariously thin, the Communists turned on the civilian population. Rebuffed at every turn by the people in their call for a general uprising, mass defections from the armed forces, and a coalition with the so-called National Liberation Front, the attackers shifted to an orgy of killings, abductions, and arsons. Entire families were liqui­dated in their homes, herded groups executed away from or in public view, hospitals, schools, places of worship violated, non­combatants reviled, slain and buried in mass graves in the big­gest Communist offensive of the war.

In the next few days, time and deceit had run out on the Com­munists; indeed, their sneak of­fensive headed for total collapse. Militarily, it was a stunning rever­sal for the reds. Politically, it was humiliating, the South Viet­namese firmly rejecting the Com­munists call that they rise against

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Darkne.s de ... ended on Saigon, other population ........

d ••• c.-ted Then terror came to civilian home.

For these Viet Cong troops and Chinese. Soviet weapons it was early capture

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The heartbreak of flight, desolation, despair, ruin was deep as it was intense their government. And in one magnificent and massive show of courage, an outraged people stood by freedom and the national sense of purpose.

The Communists had announced they would observe a sevenday truce beginning Jan. 27. South Vietnam and her allies opted for a 36-hour ceasefire starting at noon, Jan. 29. It was barely 9 hours old when the Communists attack­ed Danang and Nha Trang. Saigon immediately cancelled its truce. The following day, however, the North Vietnamese-led offensive lashed with convulsive and con­certed impact on population cen­ters, among them Saigon, Danang,

Hue, Dalat, Can Tho, My Tho, Chau Phu, Vinh Loi, Kien Hoa, Ca Mau, Soc Trang, Bac Lieu, Moe Hoa, Vinh Long, Sadec, Bien Hoa, Khiem Cuong, Phu Cuong, Xuan Loc, Phan Thiet, Nha Trang, Tuy Hoa, Qui Nhon, Kontum, Pleiku, Ban Me Thuot, Hoi An, Quang Tri, Quang Ngai, Tam Ky, Tan Canh, and Ninh Hoa.

In slanderous and deceitful vein, the Viet Cong Radio charged that the truce cancellation by Saigon was aimed at c accelerating mur­derous actions against the popul­ation during the sacred festival of the year _ and insisted that the VC continues to respect the seven­day ceasefire so as to protect the

population and enable them to enjoy Tet _.

They infiltrated the cities in peasant garb, in uniforms of South Vietnamese Army troops, and even in Buddhist saffron robes.

Immediately hit in Saigon were Independence Palace, the Ameri­can Embassy, VN Radio Station, Joint General Staff headquarters, Navy headquarters, Tan Son Nhut airbase\, and police stations. But even as South Vietnamese and allied troops were repulsing, con­taining, and disastrously decimat­ing their ranks, red propaganda was. loud, persistent that they had taken over the government appar­atus in the transparent, futile effort to enveigle the people to their side.

The red sneak offensive hit dest­ructive apex after they vent their

Wounded VC is siven a drink of water from ARVN soldier's canteen

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Mirror of fear: the faces of Vietnamese civilians fleeing from terror

Beneath the debris of a loved home. perhaps forever silent kin

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From President Nguyen Van Thieu an appeal for courage. sacrifice. national solidarity to young military volunteers. Below: the National Assembly in joint session over emergency

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The President rallied

Youth volunteers hunt the enemy with simple arms

the nation ire on the population, leaving in its wake 8,697 civilians dead and 14,614 wounded. The swath of the red sickle left a trail of misery for 700,000 refugees as the Com­munists burned or destroyed 89,859 houses.

In the face of obdurate and resolute resistance by the people and when the much-promised rein­forcements failed to arrive, Com­munists remnants made their last stand in a few places, particularly in Hue, holding civilians 3.S host­ages and embarking on mass exe­cutions unparalleled in the present conflict, and enormous quantities.

Such was the sweeping treach­ery and brutality of the Commu­nist offensive that never in the past did the people manifest such cohe­sion in the fight against Commu­nism or affin ity with their govern­ment - long taken for granted -as they did when the offensive put them to the acid test.

With the acrid pall of smoke hanging over the devastated areas. the burden of attending to war

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Students' response to call for training

was immediate

Student spokesman vows fight «with last drop of blood.

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victims across the nation pressed with urgency and heavily on the Saigon government. It was a pro­blem gargantuan in scope and seemingly impossible of quick solution.

President Nguyen Van Thieu immediately set up a Central People's Relief Committee on Feb. 4, charged it with the mission of coordinating the activities and needs of various relief agencies throughout the nation, and allotted VN$ 50 million (U.S.$ 0.418 million) for the purpose.

He addressed a joint session of the Constituent Assembly, appeal­ed to the nation for the utmost in national unity, sacrifice, and dedi­cation to overcome the formidable tasks ahead. Public response was enthusiastic and prompt with pol­itical, social, religious groups pled-

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10.000 youths complete military training course

ging all-out cooper'ltion in rehabil­itation and reconstruction endea­vors.

With dispatch, contributions to the relief campaign poured in a steady stream from the public and countries all over the world.

While Vietnamese and allied troops pushed military operations to flush out the Communist remn­ants from the cities and towns, other efforts centered on the care of war victims and refugees. All hospitals were placed on round­the-clock duty as the Nounded clogged corridors. Blood donations from the people were so generous that transfusion centers had to close their campaign after a fort­night. Such was the success of military, civilian, and government campaigns to remedy the havoc wrought by Communist offensive Civilian on the lookout for aUackers 11

Too young to know or care, tot feeds self

Section of a IIChool corridor is new home for refugees

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Refugees receive government

relief at social center run by Buddhists

Girl Scout does tonsorial job at center

The refugee centers: like sardines in can

that within a month the situation

in the attacked areas was back to near normal. By the first week of

April the refugees in the Saigon

area were down to 100,000 and had

been settled in 60 centers.

Immediate relief needs having

been met, the government turned to long-range plans to ensure relocation of thousands rendered

homeless by VC arson and terror. In Saigon, the first phase of a reconstruction plan was launched calling for the building of 12,000 housing units which will transform the face of the slums which bore

the brunt of the damage. Similar

projects are underway in the prov­

inces.

Youth participation in these

reconstruction programs was

heart-warming. In Saigon, over

1,000 students from ,public and

private schools joined other vol­unteers and rushed completion of

temporary houses for refugees,

working close to exhaustion in

sweltering heat.

The Communist offensive im­posed the darkest Tet celebration

within memory. It was all part of

the never-ending, a m bit i 0 u s

scheme of the aggressors to force

the formation of a coalition gov­

ernment and to • communize all

of Vietnam under Hanoi -. It failed to reckon with South Vietnamese

courage, tenacity, and sense of

unity. It backfired, and as Presid­

ent Thieu simply put it: • The

back of the Viet Cong attack has

been broken_.

South Vietnamese and Allied

troops accounted for 70,000 North

Vietnamese and Viet Cong killed

and captured in the three months following the Tet Truce offensive.

On May 5, even after Hanoi had

agreed to meet with U.S. repres­entatives in Paris for preliminary

discussions on peace, North Viet­namese and VC troops launched

a second wave of attacks against

Sa i g 0 n and other population

centers.

Outflanked, outfought, and spur­ned anew by the people, the at­tackers again imposed acts of terr­

or on non-combatants, shelling and

burning civilian houses and exec­uting innocent bystanders, among

them four foreign news correspon­

dents covering the Vietnam war.

The new attacks ballooned the

number of refugees, now estimated

at close-to 2,000,000 for the entire

Vietnam conflict, by another

100,000.

Repulsed time and again in their

attempts to stay in small units on

the fringes of the city, particularly

the Chinese section of Cholon, the

Communists have resorted to

almost daily, indiscriminate, and

wanton shelling of the city with

122 mm. Russian-made rockets.

killing hundreds of innocent civ­

ilians.

The Communists have taken a dISastrous - toll. Gen. William C.

\Vestmoreland, Commander of U.S.

Forces in Vietnam, who has been

reassigned to the post of Chief of

Staff, U.S. Army, said on the eve

of his departure for the United

States last May 10, that the enemy

had suffered a total of 113,000 kill­ed since the beginning of the year.

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THIO: POPULATION ("WATER") ARE ALLERGIC TO THE VC "FISH" Tet Att_ilcks, F<-,br"ar,! 1968

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FLORl::NCE NIGH,['INGALES IN UNIFORM:

ARVN SOLDIERS BANDAGING CHILD HI'l' BY VC FIRE

Tpt Attacks, Febr~lary 1 '.l68

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Viet-Nam Info Series 13 1968 TET ATTACKS (11 69)

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